Some things can make me feel like like the world is a bad place filled with bad people doing bad things, or STUPID people doing STUPID things, or some other combination of bad/stupid that makes me feel yucky and sad and maybe NOT like procreating—and perhaps that more than anything else gives you an idea of the DEPTH of the moods I’m talking about: that I would, however briefly, NOT WANT ANOTHER BABY.

Anyway. These are balanced by flashes of GOODNESS and AWESOMENESS that make me love people more. I had that kind of flash while watching a video Paul found: some guy took Google Earth and carefully lined up real photographs with the weird, flat-and-not-flat Google Earth images. I don’t know why I would find this so TOUCHING, and so indicative of the good of humankind, but I did. And so I will post the video here, in case it will give you that feeling too. People can be so GREAT. And so CREATIVE. And so CUTE.

[If you’re here from the future, the video was taken down so it no longer shows here.]

Monique sent me an email I thought we’d all want to pitch in on.

I’m 43 years old and just found out that I’m pregnant with our third child!!! Our youngest will be 10 by the time this one is born (I’m due at Thanksgiving) and our oldest will turn 15 in January.

My question is, where or what are the best resources right now? It’s been so long since I’ve been pregnant that I don’t know where to look. I greatly enjoyed “What to Expect When You’re Expecting” the first time around. How is that for now? Anything better?

What should I be eating? or not eating? what about diet soda? I drink a lot of water when I’m pregnant, and I gave up diet soda for the last two, but I’m having a much harder time staying away this time around.

I haven’t been to my doctor yet and probably won’t until later in April — He’s hard to get an appointment with at first, but then it’s easy.

We got rid of all the baby stuff when we moved 5 years ago, so we’re going to need everything. Any recommendations? Keeping in mind we’re on a pretty tight budget so many things will be second hand. Besides car seats, what should never be second hand? We will be having a large baby shower, but who knows what that will bring?

So, help! If you’d like.

Spill it, everyone! Powers of the Internet—ACTIVATE!

Some people find they can “Sleep now, because you won’t after the baby’s here!” Some people find their sleep batteries don’t work that way.

Some people have labors that are empowering and make them wonder why other women make such a fuss about it. Some people have labors that bring them to a crisis of faith about human design, because the Eve thing is insufficient explanation for this crap. Some people have labors that give them reason to be grateful for advances in medical science.

Some people will fall in love with their newborns instantly, on sight. Some people are fascinated right away, but not in love for a few days or weeks. Some people don’t fall in love for months.

Some people get the agreeable, laid-back kind of baby. Some people get the colicky, crabby kind of baby. Some people get the angry, opinionated kind of baby. Some people get the happy, bossy kind of baby. Some people get the whiny, fearful kind of baby. Some people get the early-developing, adventurous kind of baby. Some people get the irritable, rule-following kind of baby. Nobody should take much credit or much blame for their allotted baby.

Some people will get babies who will cooperate with the baby-wrangling system the parents have chosen. Some people will get babies who require a re-evaluation of system requirements.

Some people find they can “Appreciate every moment!” Some people find they can only appreciate it later, looking back on it, when they’re well-rested and well-dressed and fuzzy-memoried, standing in a supermarket telling a stranger to appreciate every moment.

Some people think the newborn stage is the best. Some people don’t really like babies until they reach the less-shriveled stage around 2 or 3 months. Some people don’t really like babies until they’re not babies anymore.

Some people find that the impact of children on their lives is so severe, they need to warn the world how bad it can be. Some people find that the impact of children on their lives is so wonderful, they need to tell the world how amazing it can be. Some people find themselves confused about what exactly it is they want to tell the world.

Some people find that a new baby brings them closer to each other. Some people find that a new baby makes them feel like killing each other for chewing so loud.

Some people will find breastfeeding natural and easy. Some people will find it painful and difficult. Some people will find it a little from Column A, a little from Column B. Some people won’t do it at all, for various reasons that there is absolutely no reason for anyone else to inquire about.

Some people will find that breastfeeding melts the baby weight RIGHT OFF. Some people will find that they can’t lose the last pounds until after the baby is weaned. Some people will never lose their baby weight. Some people will gain weight for other reasons and will blame it on the baby.

Some people will find night feedings a chore, but not too bad. Some people will feel like leaping off a cliff. Either way, the child eventually sleeps through the night. Or grows up and leaves home.

Some people find a well of patience they never knew they had. Some people find a well of love they never knew they had. Some people find a well of rage they never knew they had. Some people get a grab-bag and never know what kind of day it’s going to be.

Some people will be done after one child. Some people will be done after two children. Some people will be done after three, or four, or five, or six children. Some people will never be done. Some people will not be able to understand that different people want different numbers.

Some people say a lot of stuff about how they plan to bring up children, and then later they find they have to take a lot of it back. Some people notice this happening to other people, and are careful not to talk too much about their plans.

Some people will have listened mostly to talk about how beautiful and magical and fulfilling the child-rearing experience is. They will be in for a surprise. Some people will have listened mostly to talk about how horrible and barfy and crazy-making the child-rearing experience is. They will be in for a surprise.

I have some questions for you. At first you might think I am copying Black Sheeped‘s Friday questions (and by the way, have you noticed she’s moved to a new url?), but you see, HERS are fun questions about YOU, whereas MINE involve information I need to extract from your brains for my own personal benefit. If you know the answers to any of these, GIVE IT.

1) How much do braces cost these days? Rob has a significant overbite. I’m hoping some of you have kids in braces now and can give me an idea of financial planning here. I guess braces cost more for some situations than for others, but even a RANGE would be helpful. And also: I keep hearing that orthodontists are now doing “pre-braces” work for thousands of dollars in addition to the thousands of dollars braces already cost, but I don’t get it. I don’t need the 100% Most Excellent of Possible Excellence here, I just want his teeth straightened like I had mine straightened: wait for the 12-year molars to come in, then put braces on the teeth THE END. I don’t want to add years to the process, though I can certainly see why the orthodontists would.

2) What’s good for removing candle soot? My nice scented candles have turned on me; it seems like it was all of a sudden, but actually we’ve been noticing little smudgies for weeks and just hadn’t connected it to the candles. The soot is kind of greasy (or, duh, probably WAXY) and it’s in a fine layer on the plastic high chair, the white-painted cupboards, the plastic chairs and plastic toys, even the plastic cups that were in the cupboard. Candle smoke must be particularly attracted to plastic? Or maybe particularly visible on plastic?

3) Do those candle warmers really work? Do they use up the scent faster or slower than if you burn the candle the regular way? Do they spread out the scent as well as burning does? Are you then left with a scentless candle at the end? I have several huge boxes of scented candles that I bought to make myself feel happier, and now I am feeling LESS HAPPY IN RE THEM.

4) How do I make my blog post titles clickable? [Edit: I THINK Paul has fixed this for me. Let’s see, now, if it breaks something else on the site.] My Swistle: Baby Names site has this: you can click the title of any post and it takes you to that post’s own url, with the comments shown underneath it. My main Swistle site does not. WT? I’ve been through all the settings and can’t see where this would be.

7:00-7:25 p.m. Elizabeth cries downstairs.

7:25-8:20 p.m. I try to figure out what the heck her problem is. I sing to her and rub her back as she says, literally, “Wahhhhh” (she’s done with crying but still wants to do it) and she finally goes hitchingly off to sleep.

8:30-8:50 p.m. William has a bad dream. I get him out of bed and talk with him for awhile: it helps to fully wake up from a dream before going back to bed.

10:00-10:40 p.m. I lie awake waiting for sleep to happen. The last time I see the clock before falling asleep, it’s 10:40.

11:00-11:05 p.m. A cat chases a plastic Easter egg wildly down the hardwood hall, skittering and bumping into walls. I’m so completely asleep, at first I think it’s morning. I get up, pick up the Easter eggs and put them out of cat reach. As I do so, I “move the cat aside with my foot,” in a gesture that some people might use a different verb for.

12:25-12:45 a.m. Henry wakes up and wants to nurse. I remind him that the pediatrician said babies Henry’s age don’t need to eat at night. Henry disagrees and/or did not receive that memo.

2:30-2:40 a.m. Electrifying sounds of a cat barfing repeatedly and energetically. I lie in the dark wondering if I’m going to cry first, hit something first, or just get up and deal with it. I just get up and deal with it. I can only find two tiny bits of cat barf—is there more somewhere? I refill the cats’ water dish.

4:15-4:20 a.m. The cats have been up and around ALL NIGHT. What is their DEAL? They’re fighting in the hall for the zillionth time. FINE. I will refill their food dish, because that’s probably the problem. They can’t wait even 2 more hours until morning. FINE. I go down to the scary dark basement and refill their dish—which STILL HAS PLENTY OF FOOD IN IT. The cats come running and galumphing anyway: it’s FRESH food now.

4:45 a.m. Elizabeth cries briefly and goes back to sleep.

5:25 a.m. Paul’s alarm goes off.

6:15 a.m. My alarm goes off.

This whole week, Henry has been so fussy. Did you ever see that thing, I think it was some PBS show, where first you see a video of a scary crocodile walking along the edge of the water, and they play horror-movie music in the background? and then you see the same video again, but this time with silly, ballerina-hippo-type music? It’s amazing how different the scene looks, just with that soundtrack change: first the crocodile looks scary and ugly, and two seconds later his waddle seems hilarious and lovable.

That’s how it is around here: Henry’s fussing is the soundtrack of my day, and it changes the way I perceive the scene. A toddler asking me “My have that? My have that PINK HOAT? an’ wear it, and it is so fuffy?” (My have that pink coat and wear it and it is so fluffy) is so cute under normal circumstances, but when the baby is crabbing in the background and has been ALL DAY despite cuddles and playing and tylenol and extra nursing/food and trying not to walk away from him because it triggers what is probably separation anxiety, it is very, very difficult to focus on a little piping voice insisting that I repeat back to her everything she’s saying, and it is difficult to find it cute when she wants to hear me say it once more with feeling, and it is difficult to see our household as anything but a roiling pit of noise and demands and complaints—even if what I’m actually seeing is cuteness.

(I originally had a 60-second video here that illustrated EXACTLY what I meant: Henry crying while cute Elizabeth tried to tell me something. But after letting Blogger “process” the video for FORTY-FIVE MINUTES with no end in sight, I gave up. And get this: I hit cancel, and it is STILL “PROCESSING.”)

I am feeling Not Good today. Last night I had Night Sadness (lying awake thinking of sad and oppressive things, and all the ways in which I have failed / am failing / will fail), and usually sleep cures that—but this morning I woke up with Day Sadness. It feels like I do the same thing day in and day out, and like it’s never going to change, and like I’m never going to handle anything right, and like the world is a bad and stupid place. I know that’s not true, but what I know doesn’t have much to do with it.

So today I’m in Postpartum Mode, doing all the things that can help with irrational feelings that feel rational. I got up and made myself coffee and two hard-boiled eggs for breakfast: caffeine! protein! hot beverage!—all things that can help. I took a shower with hotter than usual water, and I turned on a bunch of extra lights: usually Mother Earth has her way, but today the world feels like it’s going down the toilet whether I use extra electricity or not.

I used my favorite 2-in-1 shampoo/conditioner, which smells beachy. I used an apricot facial scrub. After showering, I used a serving of an expensive face lotion sample my mom’s friend Donna gave me: it smells like perfume and it feels like being rich, and I use it when things are Grim. I lit my favorite Illuminations candle, the Flower Garden one that smells like flower petals and fresh spring dirt.

I held the baby for awhile. This is not recommended if the available baby is in a crabby, squirmy mood and will make you feel like a bad mother who can’t even make her own baby happy. But if you have a cozy warm baby in a footie sleeper who hooks his little arm around your upper arm and rests his cheek against your cheek companionably, this is like a shot of psych meds straight into an artery, or perhaps I mean vein, or perhaps adding that kind of medication right into the blood wouldn’t help anyway, but what I mean is that it’s pleasant.

It is common for people to say to me, a mother of five, that they feel they really can’t complain about having “only” one or two children. “I can’t even handle TWO,” they say. “I don’t know how you do it.”

Once in a while, like this morning, I’m left in the house with fewer than my usual number of children. Right now I’m here for two hours with just Henry: my parents took Rob and the twins out to lunch, and Paul has gone on some errands with William. A rational mind would assume that this would be an improvement: what a treat, to be here with just one child! What a peaceful, relaxing time, to have only 20% of my usual workload!

NO. It is HARDER. It is HARDER to have one child. When it is just Henry and me, he wants my attention all the time. I go nuts feeling like I have to entertain him; he goes nuts feeling like I have to entertain him. He fusses and cries a lot, and that’s the only sound in this quiet house.

I don’t know what to do with him: when I hold him, he squirms and kicks; when I put him down, he doesn’t like that either. I move him from his exersaucer to his playroom to his jump-up, and nothing pleases him. Time goes very slowly: how long until I can give him some lunch? how long until he’ll go down for his nap? oh no, it can’t be only 11:24!

I’m simultaneously bored and overwhelmed. It’s VERY UNPLEASANT. It reminds me of the days when Rob was a toddler and William was a baby, and I used to get weepy because I wanted to have four children but I didn’t see how that would be possible when two was SO HARD.

One is HARD. Two is HARD. Really, I don’t know how you do it.

Ever since I saw the invitation, I’ve been dreading the birthday party I had to take William to today. It’s at one of those Ark E. Ade places where you have to follow your child around urging him to be sensible with his limited tokens, and then watching as he finds out that all he can buy with his 100 tickets is 5 Tootsie Rolls, and that all the other prizes on display are DENIED.

When we arrived, the mom of the birthday child (I’m assuming it was the mom: she seemed to be in charge, so I introduced myself, but she didn’t say who she was) said I could leave him. I said I could stay, and she said no, she had helpers, and she pointed to a group of nice- and responsible-looking teenaged girls. She really seemed to hope I would go, and a little impatient with me for hesitating—as if I were some sort of overprotective weirdo. So I asked William if that was okay with him, and he said yes, and I left.

I should be delighted: I don’t have to stand around watching him waste tokens on gambling games set up to disappoint children! I don’t have to try to figure out who everyone is, as I keep introducing myself and people keep saying, “Oh, hi!” in a friendly way but not volunteering their own names! I don’t have to stand there as all the other mothers turn down cake with a little laugh, and then feel like they’re all thinking, “That explains the size of her BUTT” as I accept a plate—when actually they’re probably thinking, “Aw, dammit, I wish they’d asked her first so I could have said yes too!” I should be really glad to be home doing whatever I want while the three youngest all take naps and Paul plays Risk with Rob.

Instead I am a big mess of nerves. William is a first-grader, and I have left him in a building full of people I don’t know. Worst of all, I told him to obey instructions, but I neglected to say that he should not obey anyone trying to get him to leave the building. How could I have forgotten to tell him that? It would be the most natural thing in the world for him to obey someone who said, “Okay, now we’re going outside for the next part of the party!” I can see him following cheerfully! Who would be watching out for him? NO ONE!!!

In vain I remind myself that we live in a relatively crime-free area. In all the years I’ve lived here, there’s only been one thing that even SEEMED like attempted kidnapping, and it turned out to be some drunk idiot. Nothing bad is going to happen. There were five teenagers and several adults in charge of about a dozen children. I’m going to go back to the arcade in an hour and a half, and William’s going to be there, pink-cheeked and wired and full of cake, with colored frosting stains on his shirt that won’t come out, holding a goody bag and covered in germs from the vile ball pit, and with no answers to my anxious questions designed to discover if we sent a present of approximately the right value. And all the way home, I am going to drill him about not leaving the building with strangers.

Follow-up: Of course he was totally fine and safe. On the way home I said tentatively, “Was it okay, not having me there with you?” and he said, “I had so much fun, I forgot all ABOUT you!”

We got a little work done on our house today. When we moved in more than 7 years ago, the inspector said the first thing we should do was put down more insulation in the attic. Did we MEAN to do it? Oh yes! Did we in fact take even one step toward doing it, other than saying, “We should do that attic thing”? No!

Does it lower me in your eyes if I say that my DAD finally arranged it? He was having his attic done, and I was like, “OH, um, maybe if you mention that WE also….” and so he arranged to have the estimate done, and he asked the scary guys questions about what the options meant, and he told me which ones I should initial and which ones were silly and I should X them out, and he gave them my credit card number. So all I had to do was be home today to nod knowledgeably and smile insecurely and wring my hands anxiously while guys came into my house and talked about “got a good 40, 41 here!” and “yeah, that’s over 3000 cubic feet of air going out [or possibly IN] your soffits!” and other things that seemed to mean, “Things are bad, but we can plug up the holes with money!”

They put a cool red submarine-looking thing over a doorway, and blew air around, and they all seemed very pleased with the results of their before-and-after measurements, and then they left and I was pleased to have them gone so I no longer had to hide in the MIDWAY of the house: not right where they’re working, so they’d feel self-conscious and watched—but also not so far away that if they needed to ask me a question they’d have to come looking for me. Whenever one of the guys coughed or cleared his throat (which happened OFTEN), I would pop up like a hand-wringing mole, eager to be available for any insulation-related issues they might need my expert input on—and they’d look at me briefly and go back to work, and I’d act as if I’d just come out to straighten the curtains ALL SET NOW KTHX! Just going back to this other room now! In a perfectly natural manner! Like I do every day in my own house!

Well, the upside of being an anxious introvert with strangers in the house is that the Nervous Cleaning kicks in, and my kitchen looks better than it has since my mother-in-law’s last visit. Plus, I had to empty a closet for them to get into the attic, so that closet is all tidy now—er, insofar as everything is out of it and all over our bedroom.